This should be obvious but I'm having a hard time with it: Could someone suggest a way to make a little abstraction that uses counter in such a way as to output the number (current count) and the direction (1 for up, 0 for down)?

counter-direction-indicator

Might not be what you want, but assuming your counter is going up AND down(if not, then you'd know the direction, anyways, but you might be able to add to the patch below to specify up/down only to get everything that counter does, etc.), you could roll your own counter using and output this info. like so:

Might not be what you want, but assuming your counter is going up AND down(if not, then you'd know the direction, anyways, but you might be able to add to the patch below to specify up/down only to get everything that counter does, etc.), you could roll your own counter using  and output this info. like so:

This method works and is pretty simple, have a look in the "direction" subpatch. I hope it helps.

counter direction indicator